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Linux Users Might See A PowerVR Holiday Surprise

11-25-2012, 05:20 PM

Phoronix: Linux Users Might See A PowerVR Holiday Surprise

It seems the binary curtain among ARM graphics vendors may finally be falling. Aside from NVIDIA contributing to the open-source Tegra DRM driver and other interesting actions recently in the ARM Linux space, Imagination Technologies may finally becoming more open. It's looking like there may be a surprise open-source play out of Imagination for PowerVR graphics in the near future...

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1) We do not know for which OS this reference driver will be. (PowerVR chips are used in iOS, and Andi but where else?)
2) We do not know for which CHIPS this reference driver will be.
3) We do not know for which USER SPACE LIBS this reference driver will be.
4) We do not know how much of hw it will USE (and wich will still be emulated in CPU or if at all).
5) We do not know how much of actual driver IS CODED IN FIRMWAREaq.

Lots of unknown.
PS Anyone know about PowerVR chips that are used in FLOSS OS other than Android?
PSPS Anyone know what name is proper for driver in firmware? OS driver vs hardware driver? OS driver vs firmware driver?

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iOS: barely open, and apple is decidedly not open about the gfx part of the stack.
Android: Could be.
*BSD: I don't think there's any sort of _market_ that's asking for ARM BSD systems with a fully open-source EGL/ OpenGL ES stack...
Windows 8: Since when did MS want FOSS drivers? And how do they fit with Secure Boot?
WinCE: Possible (witness AMD), but I doubt that they'd drive the decision to start with.

PowerVR has lost Intel over their drivers, so I'd imagine they would rather not lose the droid market.

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PS Anyone know about PowerVR chips that are used in FLOSS OS other than Android?

How about, you know, GMA500 and its many descendants? :P But even if they did release a reference driver for that, it's doubtful if it would be of much use, given that Alan Cox's work on it entirely from bits and pieces of documentation is already fairly decent. Unless their reference driver also comes with extra documentation...